Page 12 of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

I watch him in speculative silence and realize there isn’t a trace of understanding in his clear brown gaze. What’s there is puzzlement, and then traces of discomfort as the silence lengthens. Embarrassment, even. I cringe a little and withdraw to my end of the sofa, aware my breath must smell like a pub carpet and I probably look like someone should stab me through the heart with silver.

‘Ignore me,’ I say, pulling the cushion over my head. ‘Pretend I’m not here.’

The irony isn’t lost on me. I cannot possibly be here.

‘Shall I stick the kettle on? Coffee might help.’

I fight the irrational urge to tell Jonah to piss off for trying to be helpful. Dragging the cushion from my face, I sit up straight and scrub at my cheeks as Freddie comes back in and flops on the chair.

Freddie. I want to climb into his lap. I want to fill my head with the scent of him, for his arms to hold me and his lips to kiss me. I want Jonah Jones to go, even as he accepts the beer Freddie holds out across the coffee table and they fall into easy conversation. I rest back against the sofa for a couple of minutes with my eyes closed, feigning disinterest as I watch Freddie through my lashes. And then my eyes fly wide open as Jonah speaks.

‘I’m buying a motorbike.’

I’m surprised; dismayed. Freddie was always on about getting a bike, always in a hurry to get further, faster, but Jonah has never struck me as the type. Since Freddie’s accident, the idea of anyone wilfully putting themselves in any kind of danger on the road fills me with dread. Just getting behind the wheel of the car again was an achievement for me.

‘Just fancy a change from the Saab, sometimes,’ he says conversationally, man-to-man. Jonah drives an old black Saab convertible, a leather-lined battleship on wheels he loves for no discernible reason. ‘It’s getting a bit long in the tooth, might shake things up a bit.’

‘Don’t do it,’ I blurt, too loud, too panicky.

They both look at me, startled by my unexpected outburst.

‘Spur of the moment decision. There was a “for sale” photo pinned to the board in the staffroom,’ he says, looking slowly away from me to Freddie, choosing to let my words go uncommented on. He must think I’ve lost it. ‘Off Gripper Grimes, of all people.’

Freddie barks with laughter. ‘You’re buying a motorbike off Gripper Grimes?’

Gripper Grimes taught us all maths. He earned his nickname from the way he picked kids up by the scruff of their shirt collar to haul them out of class; Freddie most often of all. It’s strange hearing Jonah speak of the teachers who terrorized us as kids as his colleagues now.

‘You won’t believe this thing when you see it.’ Jonah’s eyes glow. ‘Classic Norton Manx. He’s barely had it out the garage since he bought it new.’

From what I recall of Gripper Grimes, he wasn’t exactly a wind-in-his-sideburns, open-roads kind of man.

‘He always drove that knackered old white Volvo,’ Freddie recalls.

Jonah nods. ‘Still does, mate.’

‘No way!’

Jonah nods again. ‘Serviced twice a year and looked after. Made to last, like his wife, he says.’

I’m amazed Gripper is even still alive, let alone making seventies-style jokes about the long-suffering Mrs Grimes. He must have sailed past retirement age back when he taught us; that he’s still teaching, and even more that he’s still driving, is a shock.

Freddie flicks the TV over to the pre-match warm-up, the pundits on the sidelines with competitively big microphones interviewing anyone they can lay their hands on. I’m suddenly hot and feel as if I might be sick; a hangover and talking to your dead fiancé will do that to a girl. Lurching to my feet, I mumble something about the bathroom and make a dash for the stairs.

Ten minutes later I grab the sink and haul myself up off my knees, relieved to have flushed the contents of my stomach down the loo. I rinse my mouth out and stare at my reflection in the mirrored cabinet over the sink. Christ, I look hideous. Fresh tear tracks from throwing up streak through the mascara stains already on my cheeks. And that’s when I notice I’m wearing the tiny enamel bluebird pendant my mum gave me for my eighteenth. I didn’t put it on this morning. I couldn’t have.

I lost it five years ago.

‘Better?’ Freddie says, glancing up at me when I go back downstairs.

I nod and raise a lack-lustre smile. ‘Need something to eat, I think.’

‘Line your stomach,’ Freddie says, his attention already back on the game.

‘Pizza?’ Jonah nods towards the box flipped open on the coffee table.

The sight of congealing cheese sets my stomach churning again. ‘Think I better stick to toast,’ I say, my fingertips clutched around the bluebird nestled in the space between my collarbones. I’m so glad to see it again. I lost it in a club; I didn’t even miss it until the next day. It wasn’t especially valuable to anyone except me, but of course no one had handed it in. My brain is trying to piece together what it means that I still have it here.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I lay my head on my folded arms and just listen; to Freddie’s animated match commentary and Jonah laughingly telling him to calm down before he has a heart attack, to the clink of beer bottles being opened and slid on to the glass coffee table Freddie loved and I never really liked, the life I used to take for granted carrying on regardless of the fact that Freddie died fifty-eight days ago.

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